Dead Man's Footsteps (40 page)

OCTOBER 2007

Abby drove up the headland. To her right was open grassland, with a few clusters of bushes and one dense copse of short trees, ending in chalk cliffs and a vertical drop to the English Channel. One of the sheerest, highest and most certain drops in the whole of the British Isles. To her left, there was an almost uninterrupted view over miles of open farmland. She could see the road threading through it into the distance. The tarmac was an intense black, with crisp broken white lines down the centre. It looked as if it had all been freshly painted for her today.

Detective Sergeant Branson had told her earlier that Ricky had made a mistake choosing this location, but at this moment she could not see how. It struck her as a clever choice. From wherever he was, Ricky would be able to see anything that moved in any direction.

Maybe the detective had just said it to reassure her. And she sure as hell needed that at this moment.

She could see a building about half a mile away on her left, at almost the highest point of the headland, with what looked like a pub or hotel sign on a pole. As she got nearer she saw the red-tiled roof and flint walls. Then she could read the sign.

BEACHY HEAD HOTEL.

Drive into the car park of the Beachy Head Hotel and wait for me to contact you, were his instructions. At exactly 10.30.

The place looked deserted. There was a glass bus shelter with a blue and white sign in front of it, on which was written in large lettering: THE SAMARITANS. ALWAYS THERE DAY OR NIGHT, with two phone numbers beneath. Just beyond was an orange and yellow ice-cream van, which had its sales window open, and a short distance further on there was a British Telecom truck, with two men in hard hats and high-visibility jackets carrying out work on a radio mast. Two small cars were parked by the rear entrance to the hotel; she assumed these belonged to staff.

She turned left and pulled up at the far end of the car park, then switched off the engine. Moments later, her phone rang.

‘Good,’ Ricky said. ‘Well done! Scenic route, isn’t it?’

The car was rocking in the wind.

‘Where are you?’ she said, looking around in every direction. ‘Where’s my mother?’

‘Where are my stamps?’

‘I have them.’

‘I have your mother. She’s enjoying the view.’

‘I want to see her.’

‘I want to see the stamps.’

‘Not until I know my mother is all right.’

‘I’ll put her on the phone.’

There was a silence. She heard the wind blowing. Then her mother’s voice, as weak and quavering as a ghost’s.

‘Abby?’

‘Mum!’

‘Is that you, Abby?’ Her mother started crying. ‘Please, please, Abby. Please.’

‘I’m coming to get you, Mum. I love you.’

‘Please let me have my pills. I must have my pills. Please, Abby, why won’t you let me have them?’

It hurt Abby almost too much to listen to her. Then Ricky spoke again.

‘Start your engine. I’m going to stay on the line.’

She started the car.

‘Accelerate, I want to hear the engine running.’

She did what he said. The diesel clattered loudly.

‘Now drive out of the car park and turn right. In fifty yards you’ll see a track off to the left, up to the headland itself. Turn on to it.’

She made the sharp left turn, the car lurching on the bumpy surface. The wheels spun for an instant as they lost traction on the loose gravel and mud, then they were up on the grass. Now she realized why Ricky had been so specific in instructing her to rent an off-roader. Although she did not understand why he had been so concerned it should be diesel. Fuel economy could scarcely have been something on his mind at this moment. To her right she saw a warning sign that said CLIFF EDGE.

‘You see a clump of trees and bushes ahead of you?’

There was a dense copse about a hundred yards in front of her, right on a downward slope at the cliff edge. The bushes and trees had been bent by the wind.

‘Yes.’

‘Stop the car.’

She stopped.

‘Put the handbrake on. Leave the engine running. Just keep looking. We are in here. I have the rear wheels right on the edge of the cliff. If you do anything I don’t like, I’m throwing her straight back in the van and releasing the handbrake. Do you understand that?’

Abby’s throat was so tight it was a struggle to get her voice out. ‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t hear you.’

‘I said, yes.’

She heard a roar, like wind blowing on a phone. A dull thud. Then there was movement in the copse. Ricky appeared first, in his baseball cap and beard, wearing a heavy fleece jacket. Then Abby’s heart was in her mouth as she saw the tiny, frail figure of her bewildered-looking mother, still in the pink dressing gown she had been wearing when Abby had last seen her.

The wind rippled the gown, blew all her wispy grey and white hair up in the air so it trailed from her head like ribbons of cigarette smoke. She was rocking on her feet, with Ricky gripping her arm, holding her upright.

Abby stared through the windscreen, through a mist of tears. She would do anything, anything, anything at all, to get her mother back in her arms at this moment.

And to kill Ricky.

She wanted to floor the accelerator and drive straight at him now, smash him to pulp.

They were disappearing back into the trees. He was jerking her mother along roughly, as she half walked, half tripped into the copse. The shrubbery was closing like fog around them.

Abby gripped the door handle, almost unable to stop herself from getting out of the car and running across to them. But she hung on, scared of his threat and now even more convinced that he would kill her mother, and enjoy doing so.

Maybe, with his warped mind, he would value that even more than getting his stamps back.

Where was Detective Sergeant Branson and his team? They must be close. He had assured her they would be. They were well concealed all right, she thought. She couldn’t see a soul.

Which meant, hopefully, that Ricky couldn’t either.

But they were listening. They would have heard him. Heard his threat. They wouldn’t rush the copse and try to grab him, would they? They couldn’t risk him letting his van go over the edge.

Not for a few fucking stamps, surely?

His voice came back on the line. ‘Satisfied?’

‘Can I take her now, please, Ricky. I have the stamps.’

‘This is what you do, Abby. Listen carefully, I’m only saying it once. OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘You leave your engine running and you leave your phone on like this, in the car, so I can hear the motor. You get out of the car and you leave the door wide open. You bring the stamps and you walk twenty steps towards me and then you stop. I’m going to walk towards you. I’m going to take the stamps and then I’m going to get into your car. You are going to get into the van. Your mother is in the van and she’s fine. Now this is where you have to be very careful. Are you taking this in?’

‘Yes.’

‘By the time you get to the van I will have looked at the stamps. If I don’t like what I see, I’m driving straight over to the van and I’m going to give it one hard nudge over the edge. Are we clear?’

‘Yes. You will like what you see.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then we won’t have a problem.’

Without wanting to move her head too much, in case he was watching her through binoculars, Abby glanced as much as she could around her. But all she saw was bare, windblown grassland, a small, curved brick structure, an observation point of some kind, containing some empty benches, and a few solitary bushes, none big enough to conceal a human. Where were Detective Sergeant Branson’s people?

After a couple of minutes, she heard Ricky again. ‘Get out of the car now and do what I told you.’

She pushed open the door, but it was a struggle against the wind. ‘The door’s not going to stay open!’ she shouted back at the speaker, panicking.

‘Wedge it with something.’

‘With what?’

‘Jesus, you stupid woman, there must be something in the car. A handbook. A rental docket. I want to see you leave that door open. I’m watching you.’

She pulled the envelope of rental documents out of the door pocket, pushed the door open and waved them in the air, so that he could see. Then she climbed out. The wind was so strong, a gust almost blew her over. It tore the door from her hand, slamming it. She yanked it open again, folded the envelope in two, making a thicker wedge, grabbed the Jiffy bag, then closed the door as far as it would go against the wedge.

Then, with the wind tearing painfully at the roots of her hair, hurting her ears, ripping at her clothes, she walked twenty very unsteady paces towards the copse, eyes darting in every direction, her mouth dry, scared stiff but burning with anger. She could still see no one. Except Ricky now striding towards her.

He held his hand out to take the bag with a grim smile of satisfaction. ‘About fucking time,’ he said, snatching it greedily from her.

As he did so, with all her strength and all the pent-up venom she felt for him, she swung her right foot up as hard as she could between his legs. So hard it hurt her like hell.

OCTOBER 2007

Air shot out of Ricky’s mouth. His eyes bulged in pain and shock as he doubled up. Then Abby slapped him across the face with so much force he fell over sideways. She launched another kick at his groin, but he grabbed her foot and twisted it sharply, agonizingly, bringing her crashing on to the wet grass.

‘You fucking—’

Then he stopped as he heard the roar of an engine.

They both heard it.

In semi-disbelief, Ricky stared at the ice-cream van bumping up the track towards them. And a short distance behind it, six police officers in stab vests raced towards them from around the side of the hotel building.

Ricky scrambled to his feet. ‘You bitch! We made a deal!’ he screeched.

‘Like the one you made with Dave?’ she screamed back.

Clutching the stamps, he stumbled towards the Honda. Abby ran as fast as she could, ignoring the pain in her foot, towards the copse. Behind her she heard the roar of an engine. She glanced over her shoulder. It was the ice-cream van and she could see two men in it now. Then ahead, through the trunks and branches and leaves, she could see parts of a white van.

*

Blinded by pain and fury, Ricky threw himself into the Honda, jammed it in gear and took the handbrake off even before he had closed the door. Teach that fucking bitch a lesson.

He accelerated hard, picking up speed, steering straight at the copse. He didn’t care if he went over the edge, too, at this moment. Just so long as the bitch’s mother went. Just so long as Abby spent the rest of her fucking life regretting this.

Then a blur of colour flashed in front of him.

Ricky stamped on the brakes, locking the wheels, cursing. He jerked the steering wheel sharply to the right, desperately trying to avoid the ice-cream vehicle, which had pulled up broadside across the copse, blocking his chance of ramming the van inside. The Honda slewed round in a wide arc, its tail striking the rear bumper of the ice-cream van, tearing it off.

Then to his shock he saw two small cars that he’d also assumed belonged to staff at the hotel racing across the grass towards him, blue lights strobing behind their windscreens and radiator grilles, sirens wailing.

He floored the accelerator again, disoriented for a moment, turning, turning. One of them pulled across his path. He swerved around the back of it, dropped down a steep embankment, lurched through a ditch and up the far side, on to the firm tarmac of the road.

Then, to his dismay, he saw he saw blue lights racing down towards him from the right.

‘Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Shit.’

Totally gripped with panic, he swung the wheel left and tramped the accelerator.

*

The only door on the old rusty van which was not obstructed by branches and shrubbery was the driver’s side. Abby pulled it open anxiously, carefully, heeding the warning about how close the van was to the edge.

Her nose wrinkling at the rank smell inside of faeces and tobacco and unwashed people, she called out, ‘Mum? Mum?’

There was no answer. With a stab of panic, she put her foot on the step and hauled herself up on to the front seat. For a terrible moment, staring into the gloomy rear, she thought her mother was not there. All she could see was some electrical equipment, bedding and a spare wheel. It felt as cold as a fridge. The van rocked in the wind and there was a drumming resonance inside.

Then, over it, she heard a faint, timid, ‘Abby? Is that you?’

They were, without doubt, the sweetest words she had ever heard in her life. ‘Mum!’ she cried out. ‘Where are you?’

There was a faint, ‘Here.’ Her mother sounded surprised, as if to say, Where else should I be?

Then Abby craned her neck over the rear of the seat and saw her mother, rolled up in the carpet, just her head poking out, lying on the floor right behind her.

She climbed over, the van resonating as her feet struck the bare metal floor, knelt and kissed her mother’s moist cheek.

‘Are you OK? Are you OK, Mum? I’ve got your medication. I’m going to get you to hospital.’

She felt her mother’s forehead. It was hot and clammy.

‘You’re safe now. He’s gone. You’re OK. There are police all around. I’ll get you to hospital.’

Her mother whispered, ‘I think your father was here a minute ago. He just went out.’

Abby realized she was delirious. Fever or the lack of medication or both. And she smiled through her tears.

‘I love you so much, Mum,’ she said. ‘So much.’

‘I’m OK,’ her mother said. ‘I’m as snug as a bug in a rug.’

*

Cassian Pewe lowered his phone for a moment and turned to Grace. ‘Target Two is in Target One’s car, alone. Coming back this way. Intercept if we can, safely, but there’s back-up arriving behind us.’

Grace started the engine. Both men had their seat belts unfastened, which was common practice on surveillance to enable them to get out of the car quickly if need be. Having heard the report of what had been happening, now Grace thought they should put them on. But just as he reached for his, Pewe said, ‘I see him.’

Grace could now see the black Honda too, a quarter of a mile away, driving fast down the twisting hill. He could hear the tyres squealing.

‘We have Target Two in sight,’ Pewe radioed.

The Silver commander said, ‘The priority is everyone’s safety. If you need to, Roy, you may have to use your vehicle in the operation.’

To Pewe’s consternation, Grace suddenly swung the Alfa sideways, blocking both lanes of the narrow road. And he was on the side facing the oncoming black off-roader, he realized. The side that would take the impact if the car didn’t stop.

*

Ricky clenched the wheel tight, tyres screeching again around a long, downhill left-hander bend, with nowhere to go on either side if he did come off, just steep banking. Then he lurched into a righthander.

As he came out of it he saw a maroon Alfa Romeo sideways across the road in front of him. A blond-haired man was staring bug-eyed at him out of the window.

He stamped on the brakes, bringing the car slewing to a halt only yards from the door, and slammed the car into reverse. As he did so, he heard the wail of sirens. In the distance he could see two police Range Rovers, lights blazing, racing down a hill.

He made a three-point turn and accelerated hard, back the way he had come. In his rear-view mirror, he saw the Alfa Romeo take off after him, with the two Range Rovers closing behind it. But he was more interested in what was in front of him. Or more specifically, what was in front of the copse. Because even if the ice-cream van was still in front of it, a sharp nudge from the side would do it.

Then he would take the abandoned coach road – now just a grassed-over cart track through fields, but still a public byway – which he had found and checked out. He was certain the police would not have thought about that.

He would be all right. The bitch should never, ever have messed with him.

*

Roy Grace quickly caught up with the lumbering Honda, then sat yards from its tail. Pewe radioed that they were approaching the Beachy Head Hotel.

Suddenly, the Honda veered sharply right, off the road and up on to the grassland that separated the road from the cliff edge. Grace did the same, wincing as his beloved Alfa’s suspension bottomed out. He heard and felt the grinding scrape of the exhaust striking the ground and something falling off, but he was so focused on the Honda he barely registered it.

A whole cluster of vehicles and people were ahead of them now. He saw a British Telecom truck blocking the road, with a swarm of police officers near it. Two motorcycles. Pewe turned up the volume on the radio.

A voice said, ‘Target Two may be coming back for the van. It’s in the copse behind the ice-cream vehicle. Cut him off. Target One is in the van with her mother.’

Pewe pointed through the windscreen. ‘Roy, it’s there. That’s where he’s heading.’

Grace could see the large, oval-shaped copse, with the brightly coloured ice-cream van parked a short distance in front of it.

Target Two was accelerating.

Grace dropped down a gear and flattened the accelerator. The Alfa shot forward, the suspension bottoming again in a dip, throwing both unrestrained men up, banging their heads on the roof.

‘Sorry,’ Grace said grimly, drawing level with the Honda.

On his outside now, barely inches from his door, was a flimsy-looking railing at the cliff edge. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Target Two, a heavily bearded man in a baseball cap. To his right, the railing ended suddenly, leaving shrubbery marking a completely unguarded drop now.

Grace ploughed through undergrowth, grimly hoping the shrubbery wasn’t concealing an indent in the cliff they would suddenly plunge down.

He eased off the accelerator, driving level, trying to get the nose of his car just a couple of feet in front, to force the Honda further away from the edge. The copse and the ice-cream van were looming up rapidly.

As if anticipating his thoughts, Target Two swung the Honda’s steering wheel to the right, banging hard into the passenger side of the Alfa. Pewe let out a shriek and the Alfa lurched perilously close to the edge.

The copse was coming even closer.

The Honda nudged them again. The heavier of the two cars, its nose well in front, it pushed them further over. They bounced crazily on some stones and uneven ground. Then it nudged them again, even closer to the edge.

‘Roy!’ Pewe squealed, holding on to his unfastened seat belt and sounding petrified.

They were boxed in. Grace floored the accelerator and the Alfa shot forward. The copse was now no more than two hundred yards away. He cut in front of the Honda sharply, and then, with the intention of hiding the fact that he was braking, he yanked the handbrake full on instead of pressing the brake pedal.

The effect was instant and dramatic, and not what he had expected. The tail of the Alfa broke away and the car started to slide sideways. Almost instantly, the Honda slammed into the rear wing, sending the Alfa barrel-rolling, side over side.

The force of the impact sent the Honda veering to the left, out of control, ploughing into the rear of the ice-cream van.

Grace felt himself hurtling, weightlessly, through the air. Air that was a cacophony of booming, echoing metallic noises.

He landed with a thump that winded him, jarring every bone in his body, and with a force that rolled him over several times, helplessly, as if he had been ejected from some freakish funfair ride. Then, finally, he came to a halt face down in wet grass, with his mouth jammed into mud.

For an instant he was not sure if he was alive or dead. His ears popped. There was a brief moment of silence. The wind howled. Then he heard a terrible scream, but he had no idea where it came from.

He scrambled to his feet and immediately fell over again. It was as if someone had picked up the entire headland and tilted it sideways. He stood up again, swaying giddily, surveying the scene. The bonnet of the Honda, which was lurched over at a strange angle, was embedded in the destroyed rear end of the ice-cream van. The driver of the Honda appeared to be in a daze, pushing at his door, while two police officers in stab vests were pulling on it. Smoke was coming out of the underside of the van. Several more police officers were running towards it.

Then he heard the scream again.

Where the hell was his car?

And he was suddenly filled with a terrible, sickening dread.

No! Oh, Jesus, no!

He heard the scream again.

Then again.

Coming from below the cliff-top.

He staggered to the edge, then took a sharp step back. All his life he had suffered from vertigo and the sheer drop to the sea below was more than he could look at.

‘Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp!’

He dropped on to all fours and began to crawl, aware of pains all over his body. He ignored them and made it to the edge, where he found himself looking down into the underside of his car, which was tangled up in several small trees, nose into the cliff, its tail out, balanced like a diving board. Two wheels were still spinning.

The first part of this drop was a short, steeply wooded slope. It ended in a grassy lip, about twenty feet below, and then dropped sheer for several hundred feet, down on to rocks and water. It freaked Grace out and he pulled back to where he felt safer. Then heard the scream again.

‘Help me! Oh, God, help me! Please help me!’

It was Cassian Pewe, he realized. But he couldn’t see the man.

Fighting back his fear, he crawled to the edge again, looked down and shouted, ‘Cassian? Where are you?’

‘Oh, help me. Please help me. Roy, please help me.’

Grace shot a desperate glance over his shoulder. But everyone behind him seemed occupied with the van and the Honda, which looked like it was going to go up in flames.

He peered down again.

‘I’m going! Oh, for God’s sake, I’m going.’

The sheer terror in the man’s voice jolted him into action. Taking a deep breath, he leaned down, gripped a branch and tested it, hoping to hell it would hold. Then he swung himself over the edge. Immediately his leather shoes slid down the wet grass and his arm, holding on to the branch, jerked painfully in its socket. And he realized in that instant that the only thing stopping him from sliding all the way down the sharp slope to the lip, then straight over into oblivion, was this one branch he was holding with his right hand.